A Pacific storm tapped moisture from the sub-tropics Tuesday, becoming far more powerful than expected, producing rain and high temperatures that set or broke records across San Diego County.

Oceanside received nearly 3 inches of rain by late Tuesday afternoon and Palomar Mountain was at 4.54 inches, with additional precipitation expected well into the evening.

The storm also whipped up wild winds that gusted to 71 mph at Palomar, 55 mph at North Island, and 45 mph at San Diego International Airport. The winds factored in to the collapse on a theater marque in National City.

Through 4 p.m. Tuesday, San Diego International recorded 1.25 inches of rain, tying the record for January 9th, set in 1866. The figure represents more than half of what San Diego receives during an average January.

Oceanside Harbor received 2.64 inches of rain during the same period, more than doubling the record of 1.19 inches set in 1980.

Precipitation records also were tied or broken in Vista, Chula Vista, Escondido, Alpine, Palomar, and Campo.

The air was unusually warm Tuesday due to the arrival of tropical moisture. That led to new high minimum temperature records in Chula Vista, El Cajon, and Borrego Springs.

The storm ended the dry start to the rainy season. From October 1st to late Monday, the airport had only received about 0.10 inches of rain, which is about 3.5 inches below average. That is driest start to the season on record.

Forecasters believed that a garden variety storm from the Gulf of Alaska would drop south and pick up a bit of sub-tropical moisture, giving the region a decent soaking during the first storm of winter.

Instead, the storm grabbed enormous amounts of warm, moist air from the region between Baja California and Hawaii, and dropped much of it in Southern California, especially along the San Diego coastline.

The rain started on Monday night and intensified before dawn on Tuesday, releasing downpours from downtown San Diego to Oceanside to Ramona, Palomar, Fallbrook and Julian.

The lower San Diego River rapidly rose to 8 feet near the Fashion Valley Mall, flooding an adjoining street and choking traffic in Mission Valley.

“What we got was a narrow atmospheric river from the sub-tropics,” said Alex Tardy, a forecaster for the National Weather Service. “The Pacific storm just pulled it up to us. I’m not sure why it happened like this.”

It was a wild event, but not as rare as it might seem.

“It’s not uncommon for our annual precipitation to be dominated by a few big storms, and this system might end up providing about 15 percent of what we get in a year,” said Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at UC San Diego.

“This feels unusual because it has been dry for so long.”

It appears that San Diego will now be dry for at least the next week to 10 days, which doesn’t bode well for seasonal rainfall. Despite Tuesday’s storm, Ralph’s center estimates that there’s only a 19 percent chance that San Diego County will receive its average rainfall this year.